Sara J. (kefuwa) > Recent Status Updates

The new world cannot be reinstated if man does not go into the desert where he can more easily recognize the evil and the evil one and, where he can successfully fight for the good.

Because fasting was so important in Jesus' life and was a condition for the opening of God's way, we, too, must discover the same meaning of fasting. A person who fasts enters into his desert where he decides again for God. In this decision for God, the new world begins, the world of God's Kingdom.

"Why don't you just wait, Nephew. See how it goes. She starts school in September. Three months is a long time for a child. I agree with you she's different, you might say she is a bit strange sometimes, but you know, we're all different though we may pretend otherwise. We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up. Bunny doesn't do that yet."

"Of course you can do the job. We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you can say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things."

Why do we weep in grief, the aunt wondered. Dogs, deer, birds suffered with dry eyes and in silence. The dumb suffering of animals. Probably a survival technique.

Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing.

There was a slightly embarrassed pause while Morgan registered this fact, and the others knew, and he showed that he knew they knew - all without word being uttered, in the kind of psychological infinite regress that occurs when a group of people share completely a secret which nobody will ever mention again.

On the appropriate day (unless, as frequently the case, there had been some stupid mistake in programming) the right message would be automatically flashed to its destination. And even though the recipient might shrewdly suspect that the warm words on his screen were entirely due to electronics - the nominal sender not having thought of him for years - the gesture was nevertheless welcome.

The development of global information systems had also rendered obsolete another annoying task. It was only necessary to make special notation against the names of those friends one wished to greet on their birthdays or other anniversaries, and the household compost would do the rest.

"Nor do I understand anything more than a glimmer of the way you think," said Human. "But isn't that a good thing too? The mystery is endless. We will never cease to surprise each other." - "Til death ends all surprises," said the Hive Queen.

That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be. If we die, then our death has meaning to the rest of the universe. Even if our lives are unknown, the fact that someone lived here, and died, that will have repercussions, that will shape the universe.

Then why do you bother doing everything, Grego? Because someday you will die. Why should anyone ever have children? Someday they will die, their children will die, all children will die. Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were there, and during the time we lived, we were alive.

The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.

What was it that the old poet had said? "There is no such thing as the State." Perhaps that was going too far; but it was better than the other extreme.

Rooted as he was in the past, he was glad that the old traditions were cherished and protected. If one thing had been learned from the bloody history of mankind, it was that only individual human beings mattered: however eccentric their beliefs might be, the must be safeguarded, so long as they did not conflict with wider but equally legitimate interests.

Even in this age of instantaneous communications and swift global transport, it was convenient to have a place that one could call one's office. Not everything could be stored in patterns of electronic charges; there were still such items as good old fashioned books, professional certificates... ... and of course the wall-to-wall carpet which every senior bureaucrat needed to soften the impact of external reality.

"Fame is the spur," he recited in the silence of his thoughts. How did the rest of it go? "That last infirmity of noble mind. ... To scorn delights, and live labourious days."

All stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

"Whenever humans meet foreigners, weak or strong, dangerous or peaceable the issue of destruction comes up. It's built into our genes." - "So is love. So is the need for community. So is the curiosity that overcomes xenophobia. So is decency."

All along you said yes. But you're afraid. You're afraid of losing what you have, not knowing what you'll be.

Thus a promise from the Hive Queen was written on water. She would only keep the promises that still made sense to her to keep.

"And what do the Neccessarians teach?" - "That one lives in peace & harmony with one's environment, disturbing nothing, patiently bearing mild or even serious afflictions. However, when a genuine threat to survival emerges, one must act with brutal efficiency. The maxim is, Act only when necessary, and then act with maximum force and speed."

She looks older, Louis thinks in astonishment. It's finally happening. What a remarkable thing, these genetic trip wires, the way a body can sail along essentially unaltered, decade after decade, and then in a few years capitulate to age. Louis is surprised by how sad he feels, how little satisfied, by the relatively abrupt departure of Clarissa's unnaturally prolonged prime.

Wang-Mu nodded understanding perfectly how a culture could cling to long dead customs just for the sake of national identity, and also grateful to be in a place where such customs were all superficial and distort and destroy the lives of the people the way they had in Path.